1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to dry lamination, and in particular to dry lamination of pre-die-cut leather to adhesive films in an industrial, high speed automated setting.
2. Description of Related Art
Laminated materials have particular utility in the automotive industry for interior trim applications such as armrests, consoles, headrests and seating applications. In this market, utilization of industrial high speed automated equipment is required due to the high volume requirements of the products involved. Currently, the most advanced lamination equipment involves the utilization of a flat bed laminator set on a continuous belt conveyor. The flat bed laminator heats the two materials being laminated initially, applies pressure to the materials, and then cools the materials. The end product of this lamination process is a lamination of the materials that have been fed through the laminator. Using the typical high-speed lamination technology to date, the materials are first laminated and then die cut to the proper contour. This lamination technology has been used to produce leather laminates, but there are disadvantages to applying this process to the lamination of leather.
One of the disadvantages is that in a typical flat bed lamination the entire surface of the piece of leather is laminated which results in wasted leather and lamination material when the desired end product is later die cut from the leather laminate. The traditional manner of reducing wasted leather and other lamination materials has been to die cut all the layers of the laminate in advance of feeding them through the flat bed laminator. This alternative has the disadvantage of being very labor intensive. It is labor intensive because a laborer must carefully position the materials to be laminated together with appropriate alignment of all the edges of the die cut material prior to feeding the materials into the flat bed laminator. This process results in increased labor costs, waste due to human error, and a reduction in quality due to human error. In addition, because the materials are already die cut, it has been difficult to perform this alignment in an automated process.
A second difficulty associated with he use of leather laminates in automotive applications occurs when the leather laminate is tightly wrapped over rigid, energy absorbing surfaces such as armrests, consoles, headrests, and seating applications. In these applications, there is a natural tendency for the leather to expand and contract under normal operating conditions. In particular, when the interior temperature of the car is elevated above approximately 79.degree. C., as occurs during the summer months, there is considerable expansion of the leather. The result of this expansion of the leather with traditional leather laminates is a "baggy" appearance to the leather covered item. This appearance is unacceptable to the end customer.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a method for permitting the rapid production of leather laminates in a highly automated system. It is also desirable to provide a method which utilizes pre-die-cut lamination layers in order to reduce waste. It is furthermore desirable to provide a method for producing a leather laminate which will not present a "baggy" appearance over time as a result of exposure to normal operating conditions within a vehicle.